When I turned around, however, I stopped laughing. Father was standing on the sidewalk, arms crossed over his broad chest, silver hair slicked back, dress shirt open one button and his tie loosened.
My heart dropped. Judging by the dark scowl on his face, he’d seen Jason.
Not good.
THREE: Romeo & Juliet Redux
Becca
October, same year
“Y-y-you can’t keep me l-l-l-locked up in my room forever, Father!” I stood in the doorway to my room, fury pounding through me, taking all my fluency with it.
He stood impassive in the hall outside my room, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were narrowed, dark, angry. “Yes. I can. And I will. You lied to me. You were out with that football player. I’ll keep you in here for as long it takes for you to learn your lesson.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten, breathing deep with each number. “This isn’t fah-fah-fair. We just went to dinner. Drove around. I know I lied, and I’m sorry. But p-p-plea-please, I’m going crazy. I already don’t have a life, but now you won’t let me do anything.”
“Your sanity is at no risk, Rebecca. Stop exaggerating.”
Another ten-count, ten more deep breaths. Father never rushed me; he always waited until I was ready to speak. He had a stutter as a child, and didn’t completely shed it until he moved to the States and did some fluency shaping therapy. He understood that much about me at least.
“It’s not an exaggeration, Father. School, my room, homework, piano, speech. That’s all I ever do. Even before this, that’s all I ever did. Now? You might as well enroll me in online school and literally lock me in my room. I’ll be seventeen in two months, Father. When will I get to make my own decisions?”
“Basta, figlia.” He didn’t yell, because he never yelled. The words were delivered quietly, intensely.
I clamped my mouth closed around my screams of protest. I clenched my hands into fists and refused to cry. “You’ll regret this, Father. Remember that.” I closed the door in his face and sat at my desk, staring out the window at the trees waving in the afternoon sunlight.
I stuck my earbuds in my ears and scrolled through my iPod until I found the song I wanted, “Flightless Bird” by Iron & Wine. It was a song from the Twilight soundtrack, and I’d since devoured every song by Iron & Wine I could find. I liked the poetry in the lyrics, the slightly off-kilter sound and deep-felt meaning in every song. “Singers and the Endless Song” came up next, and I let myself go, let myself stare out the window and listen, just breathing and not speaking, not stuttering, not failing to properly express myself.
At some point, my pen began a frantic scribble across the page, giving vent to my thoughts.
ANYWHERE BUT HERE
Trees wave and tease
Blown in the long free breeze
Urging me out and into the blue
Into the sunlit green spaces
Where no words trip over clumsy tongues
Where no tensions drip like rain from eaves
I don’t even wish I was a bird
I only wish I was out there
Walking in the grass or climbing in the trees
Heated by the sun or chilled by the wind or wet in the rain
Anywhere but here
Chained to this stagnant shore
A prisoner of perfection
An enemy of state
For no more crime than being
A teenaged girl
In like with a teenaged boy
For no more crime than driving
In lazy dusty endless circles
Listening to country songs
And my own nervous heartbeat
My pulse pounding and my nerves twanging
Like the banjos on the radio
I can’t even shout my anger
Can’t even scream my frustration
Can’t even curse
It would only come out a jumble
“Fu—fu-fu-fuck you!”
Fu fu fu fu
Bu bu bu bu
Duh duh duh
Childish stumbling words
Tripping syllables and slippery syntactic screw-ups
That’s me
The silent girl
The stutterer
The prisoner
The smart girl
The valedictorian scribbling maledictions to no one
I heard my doorknob twist and the door banged open, revealing my older brother Ben. He glanced around my room, found me at my desk, and nodded at me, his long, stringy black hair hanging in tangles in front of his face. He kicked the door shut, stopping it from slamming by catching the knob at the last second.
“’Sup, Beck?” He plopped onto my bed and kicked his feet out on my comforter, shoes and all. “Still locked in your tower, huh?” He tossed his head to clear the hair away from his mouth and eyes.
His eyes were cloudy, hazed, reddened. I sighed and turned away from my desk, closing my notebook. “Are you high again, Ben?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, so? I’m havin’ more fun than you.”
“Dead people have more fun than me,” I deadpanned.
Ben laughed. “True. Old dead people, at that.”
I laughed and lay on the bed next to Ben, crawling over him to lie on the inside next to the wall, shoving him over with my hip. “You better not get mud on my comforter, Benny.”
“I won’t. And don’t call me Benny. I hate it.” He dug in his pocket, pulled out a glass pipe and a lighter, then lifted up and shoved open my window. He lay back down and dug in the cargo pocket of his baggy shorts and pulled out the brown tube from a paper towel roll. Each end of the tube had fabric softener sheets rubber banded over the opening. He sparked the lighter and put the pipe to his lips, lit the pot and sucked it into his lungs, setting the pipe and lighter on his chest before settling back onto the bed.
“You’re really going to do that right here in my room? In the house?” I asked, pissed off.
He shrugged, grinning a closed-lipped smile at me. He lifted the tube to his mouth and blew the thick, acrid smoke through the dryer sheet and out the window, the pungent smell now masked enough to not be readily noticeable.
“If Father catches you, he’ll send you to military school, Ben. You know that, right?”
Ben shrugged again. “He can try. I’m eighteen anyway, Beck. He can’t do shit but have me arrested.” He glanced at me, gesturing to me with the pipe; I shook my head, like I always did, and he took another long drag. “Why do you call him that?” he asked around his lungful of smoke.
“Call who what?” I felt loose, and realized I was getting a slight contact high from the fumes.
He blew out the smoke before answering. “Dad. You still call him ‘Father’ like we’re in the f**king eighteenth century or some shit.”